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  1. PLATO; [Marsilio FICINO].

    Platonis opera.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Filippo Pinzi, 22 April 1517.]

    Third edition of Marsilio Ficino’s important and influential Latin translations of and commentaries on Plato’s works, with numerous early annotations.

    £5000

  2. SABELLICO, Marco Antonio (or Marcantonio) Coccio; Petrus PONTANUS (or Du Pont, De Brugge).

    Sanctissime elegie de...

    Paris, Jean de Gourmont, [c. 1513].

    One of only two recorded editions, both very rare, of this set of elegies addressed to the Virgin Mary, followed by verses ‘on St Peter’s sinking boat’, the former extensively annotated by a contemporary French student.

    £1400

  3. THUCYDIDES; Lorenzo VALLA, translator; Henri ESTIENNE, editor.

    Περι του Πελοποννησιακου πολεμου...

    [Geneva, Henri II Estienne for] Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, Claude Marne, and Jean Aubry, 1594.

    A richly annotated and extra-illustrated copy of Thucydides, edited and printed by perhaps the greatest Greek scholar of the sixteenth century; a bilingual edition with multilingual annotations, providing evidence of the keen interest in Thucydides demonstrated by German Protestant humanist scholars.

    £2250

  4. VALERIUS MAXIMUS, Gaius.

    Valerii Maximi dictorum, & factorum memorabilium libri novem.

    [(Colophon:) Sélestat, Lazarus Schürer, December 1520.]

    Very rare edition of Valerius Maximus printed at Sélestat in eastern France, profusely annotated in a sixteenth-century German hand.

    £2250

  5. VORAGINE, Jacobus de.

    Sermones quadragesimales [– de tempore & de sanctis per totum annum] …

    [(Colophons:) Venice, Simon de Luere for Lazarus de Suardis, 12 September 1497; – 31 August 1497.]

    An annotated copy of Jacobus de Voragine’s sermons, one of the most popular medieval sermon collections, composed in the late thirteenth century. Jacobus de Voragine (Jacopo da Varazze) was a Dominican preacher from Genoa who produced several model books of sermons, providing variations to be...

    £3250

  6. [CHINA.]

    Business report written to a Mr Luo by two Chinese Christian employees.

    [China], 咸豐壬子年 [1852].

    An interesting mid-nineteenth-century report written by two employees (Andrew Zhu 朱安德肋 and Anna Pan 潘亞納) to their manager Mr Luo 羅當家大人, granting us an unusual glimpse into the personal lives of two nineteenth-century Chinese Christian converts.

    £750

  7. [ROWE, Harry.] CROFT, John, editor?, [and Dr. Alexander HUNTER?].

    Memoirs of Harry Rowe: constructed from Materials...

    York, Printed by Wilson & Spence. Sold by all the Booksellers in the City and County of York, [1806].

    First edition of this ‘biography’ of the puppet-showman and trumpeter Harry Rowe. It is perhaps loosely woven around facts. The long second portion of the text is one of Rowe’s skits, ‘The Sham Doctor, a musical Farce’, in which a quack treats a series of eighteen comic patients. It...

    £1500

  8. BURNET, Gilbert.

    A Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland. In four Conferences....

    Glasgow, Robert Sanders, 1673.

    One of three editions, all of the same year, of a ‘decidedly aggressive’ (Stewart, p. 40) tract in dialogue on the powers of the state in church affairs and on the subject’s right to resist.

    £500

  9. ‘DORNIS, Jean’ [pseud. Élena BEER].

    La voie douloureuse.

    [Évreux, Charles Hérissey for] Paris, Calmann Levy, 1894.

    First edition of Jean Dornis’ first novel, presented by the author to her brother-in-law, Edmond Raphael Beer, one of twenty-four copies on papier de Hollande.

    £275

  10. GERHARD, Johann.

    Meditationes sacrae. Editio postrema, prioribus emendatior.

    Oxford, John Lichfield for Henry Curteyne, 1633.

    First English-printed Latin edition of Gerhard’s ‘devotional masterpiece’ (ODCC), Oxford-printed and in a contemporary Oxford binding with binder’s waste from an early edition of Melanchthon’s textbook on rhetoric.

    £950

  11. MAXIMUS the Confessor; Jean PICOT, translator.

    Sanctissimi patris magistrique, Maximi, confessoris atque martyris, varia...

    [(Colophon:) Paris,] Guillaume Morel, [1560].

    First edition of Jean Picot’s Latin translation of this Byzantine compilation of extracts from the writings of Maximus the Confessor and others, our copy owned by a sixteenth-century monk at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

    £850

  12. PONSONBY, Emily, Lady.

    De Greville’s en de Lorimers. Twee Familie-Tafereelen, naar het Engelsch ...

    Amsterdam, P. N. Van Kampen, 1851.

    First edition in Dutch of ‘Susan Grenville; or Irresolution’ from Pride and Irresolution (1850), translated by J. Oudijk van Putten; ‘Walter Lorimer’ is a much shorter sketch at the end of vol. II.

    £250

  13. [WILSON,] Thomas, Bishop of Sodor and Man.

    A short and plain Instruction for the better Understanding of the Lord’s Supper,...

    London, B. Dod, T. Longman & C. Hitch, J. Hodges, and J. & J. Rivington, 1755.

    Scarce first posthumous edition of this liturgical manual by Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, with two early female owners.

    £250

  14. [CRIMEAN WAR.]

    Les militaires chrétiens a la guerre d’orient. Récompenses annuelles.

    Versailles, Beau jeune, [1856].

    First and only edition, rare, of this unusual cartonnage giftbook history of the Crimean War.

    £375

  15. DIONYSIUS of Halicarnassus.

    Antiquitatum Rom. libri XI. Ab Aemylio Porto recens & post aliorum interpretationes Latine redditi.

    Geneva, Jacob Stoer, 1614.

    A rare pocket-sized edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the early history of Rome, in an armorial binding for Adrien Poërier.

    £450

  16. DU BOS, Jean-Baptiste, Abbé.

    Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture. … Quatriéme [sic] édition revûë,...

    Paris, Pierre-Jean Mariette, 1740.

    Fourth edition, expanded and corrected, of this key work in aesthetic and sentimental theory, with Coleridge family provenance.

    £250

  17. SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe.

    Queen Mab.

    London, W. Clark, 1821.

    First published edition, a piracy second only to the privately printed edition of 1813, of Shelley’s most provocative poem.

    £950

  18. [BECKFORD, William.]

    Vathek, conte arabe.

    Paris, Poinçot; Chatellerault, P. J. B Guimbert, 1787.

    Extremely rare, the only traced copy, of a reissue of the sheets of the first Paris edition with a provincially-printed cancel title adding to the imprint the imprimeur-libraire Pierre Jean Baptiste Guimbert, of Châtellerault. This is the rarest piece of Beckfordiana we have ever encountered,...

    £3750

  19. APPIA, Béatrice.

    A fine collection of manuscript and typescript correspondence and humorous drawings, sent to her lover Jean Carteret,...

    Paris, 1934–6.

    An extraordinary series of love letters, by turns passionate, mocking, and lyrical, with copious illustration, sent by the Swiss-born French artist Béatrice Appia (1899–1998), best known for her illustrated children’s books, to the philosopher and astrologer Jean Carteret (1906–1980), here...

    £5000

  20. BACON, Francis.

    Historia vitae et mortis.

    Amsterdam, Johannes van Ravesteyn, 1663.

    Pocket-sized Amsterdam editions of three works by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), uncut and unopened and bound, exceptionally, in the original drab boards.

    £975